Public Mind Quotes
This quotation is inscribed in the Madison Memorial Hall of the Library of Congress.
The Articles of Confederation had no Federal teeth and the Continental Congress and the State Government’s were a mess after the Revolution. At the time of this writing to Jefferson in Europe, the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention had begun and many were pinning all their hopes on the outcome. While the proceedings of the convention were secret, the fact that it was ongoing was not only public knowledge, but there was intense public interest and hope for its outcome. The delegates were under a great deal of public pressure to unify the nation and come up with a viable form of government.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
The Illuminati was a secret society. At the time, anyone who differed with the Church on issues of philosophy, ethics or religion could be tortured and burned at the stake, and anyone who criticized the Monarchy could be tortured and hung or beheaded. The result was the concept of a secret society of which the Illuminati was one. The last sentence, once it became known generally, made established monarchies and their governments very suspicious of all literary societies. To this day, literary societies are suspect in most countries as a hotbed of anti-governmetn activity, if not by the Illuminati then by some other clandestine groups. In the first half of the 20th century in America, the Communist Party infiltrated several literary societies.
Ramsay was the first major American historian of the American Revolution.
